DSRage's WWYD Journal
This is DSRage's Journal for Ed Bellis's What Would You Do contest. It chronicles a week in DSR's life during March of 2008. March 12, 2008 Another Day, Another Five Hundred Coffees I Woke up this morning at 5:33am. Knowing that another day of work was less than 30 minutes away, I leaped out of my inflatable bed, tore off my pajama pants and put on my Tim Horton’s uniform. I started with my pants today, though on cold days I will put on my shirt first to warm up my body as fast as possible. Anyways, after my shirt and pants, I put on my name tag, belt and visor. Like any hygiene-oriented person, I apply deodorant to both pits. I mentally compliment the scent of this new Axe flavour (not the spray stuff, the actual stick which is actually good) and run up stairs to brush my teeth. Noticing the time on the microwave (5:40am) I decide to phone the Taxi first so that I can brush my teeth while they are on the way- This ensures that they come earlier (Smart, eh?). Today, the Taxi was extra quick and by the time I got out of the bathroom they were outside of my house. With this in mind, I rush to the door, put on my shoes and rush out to the Taxi. “What’s the rush?”, says the Taxi driver(Who just happens to be the one who picks me up most mornings.). “I like to be out right away when I see you guys!” I reply. And off to work I go. The ride usually last 5-7 minutes and it’s a good time to stop worrying about being late for work because it’s out of my control. Today, the ride was extra quiet and the only conversing that went on was a comment about a black driver from the driver and my counter giggle which seems to be my self-defence when I don’t have a good enough reply. We arrive at Destination X (Tim Horton’s) and I pay the usual $7.50 toll (I should’ve woke up early and walked!). I go in and see that I still have 10 minutes to be on the floor, my rushed pace then is converted to a leisurely one. I hang up my coat, go to the bathroom, put on a hairnet, tuck in my shirt and go to check out the schedule of events for the day. “Yes!”, I scream as a response to my position and duty of the day. I am on drive-thru with Charlotte (My favourite person there. She picked my copy of Brawl up while I was at work and if not for that, I probably wouldn’t have it yet). Also on drive-thru with us is Shelly (An old funny lady who I like a lot,. She is really short and I tease her. I think she likes it.). Usually four are on drive-thru, but today there was only three. I tell myself that it’s because we are three of the quickest, which is a true enough judgment. My daily duty is sweeping (Which I end up not doing! I hate it anyways!). It’s time to go out on the floor and start my usual 6am-2pm shift. I love drive-thru because it’s fun aiming for the highest hourly customers and lowest hourly average window-service time. There are four positions on in the drive-thru area; Window, Coffee, Orders and Runner. Window hands stuff out and takes money (This position has the most impact on our service time while the others just support it.). Coffee make the coffees, teas, various cappuccinos and must constantly keep up with the never-ending flow of customers. Orders takes order over our intercom’esque system. Runner runs for donuts, muffin, Iced Caps, etc. When we have three we drop the runner and order-taker gets stuff. I started the shift off on Window, handing out order after order. Our time for the hour was 81people/38sec which is better than average but nothing jaw-dropping. For the record, I was on window during our stores best hour. Anyways, the shift was pretty boring for the most part. The two girls were talking about vaginal exams or something so I felt inclined to make sexual jokes all day long (They were really funny!). During break one I ate a triple-chocolate muffin, a bagel with 2 cheeses and a sausage and a bottle of water. Break two was more of a snack, consisting of cucumbers, orange juice, caramel chocolate donut and something healthy that I honestly can’t remember. The thing that kept my spirits up today was the fact that I had tomorrow and the next day off. Just thinking of my two free days of brawl was sex in the head. 2pm strikes and I make myself a 12-inch deli trio for home. I stock p drive-thru and catch a ride home with Charlotte. She wanted to go look at the turtles at the pet shop since she loooves animals soooo much as do I, so we went together. The turtle was pretty lifeless and we didn’t bother it. The Pomeranians were the best things ever and the bird that sounds like a car alarm was possible the worst part of my day. Anyways, we make our way to my house and I give my “cyas” and “thanks” and walk inside. 2:44pm... I jump in the bathtub and after I play Brawl for a while. I just play around in random things and copy CDs onto my new laptop simultaneously. And that is pretty much all that happened until 6pm, when I started writing this. What will happen tomorrow, I wonder? It’s a day off so almost anything is possible! I can’t wait to see what tomorrow will throw at me, whatever it is, I hope it doesn’t wake me up! March 13, 2008 Oh Lord, Land Lord! After getting about fifteen hours of sleep the previous three days, I knew that this day off was an opportunity to catch some extra z’s. Yeah, I was hoping for at least one and a half days worth of sleep (twelve hours), but instead the combination of knocking of the land lord at the barking of the dogs woke me up prematurely. I ignored him hoping my dad would get it, but apparently he was sleeping like a rock. The land lord just walked right in and shouted “Anybody home?!” and then shouted again “SHUT UP DOGS!”. “What an arrogant prick..” Is what I thought. He woke up my dad and began arguing like a crazy person. I kept falling in and out of sleep during all of this, but I did catch some of it. He is here because my dad was supposed to pay the rent last Friday, but failed to, bad on his part. We all know how ridiculously unforgiving this guy is and boy, did he show it. “You know that you pay to get your garbage taken out but you don’t even move it to the bin in the back”, said the land lord as I tried to fall back into dream world. I kept thinking why he was bringing stupid stuff up. Was it to make my dad feel like a bad person or something? Whatever. Soon later after approximately twenty more minutes of sleep he said “Why must you lie to me all the time?” My dad kept trying to cover himself up and as much as I hate this land lord crazy guy, I knew he was right. He had a reason to be mad, though not a reason to start Hurricane Katrina Canada Edition. Geez. Other stuff was said, but I can’t remember much, just what made me think while I was in my half-sleep state. So I woke up about four hours after the storm. I was thinking about what to do today and I arrived at one (common) answer- Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Board 8. It’s hard to really think up something which allows me to be active or something outside of my room when I have no good local friends. Tomorrow should be a change because a friend is coming home for the weekend (yay). Anyways, I played around in stadium mode to try to top some of my various scores, finished a few more characters classic mode to get their trophies and I unlocked Snake and Lucario. It’s weird how I am only unlocking these characters, but I like to take my time doing stuff so I’m not so bored in the long run and besides, I am saving my Subspace Emissary playthrough for tomorrow when I have a friend to do it with. After all of my Brawl play, I went on board 8 and bumped a few of my topics, checked to see if anyone solved the oplock problem (so I can play brawl online. Nobody did, by the way. Sucks a lot.) and then added codes from my brawl challenge of the day topic. My day pretty much was this cycle on repeat with a few other little things happening in between, like my snack of another deli trio sandwich and a Monster energy drink (I don’t drink these things for energy, I have plenty and don’t need it to sit around. I just love the taste and I’m probably addicted somewhat). It’s weird how I usually shower in the morning, but today I never. I guess I just wanted more Brawl time. With my dad taking a snooze and his request of me going to the 7-11 to get him a phone card, I decided I would actually walk down to the store in this +5 Celsius weather. I begin my walk and neighbourhood dogs bark endlessly at me (Whatever, I like dogs.). When I was about 100 feet from the store, I saw this car doing really suspicious things. It turned into a strip mall lot and stopped before really coming into it, slowly drove forward then backed up really fast. I think the driver just didn’t know where the hell he was supposed to go to park, but I think he found the right way. I walk into the store and see that the hot girl and old crack lady are hard at work, which is good to see! I do a quick run around the store and pick up some of the usual Items; King-Sized Snickers, All Dressed Ruffles, Reese’s Whipps and a Cheeseburger Hot Dog on a whole wheat bun. I also ask for the requested $25 phone card. I comes to $30.96 altogether and I pay with debit and head home. There wasn’t anything really fun to see on the way besides a gay jogger singing something. He was kinda cute ;) March 14, 2008 Journey into the deep SUBSPACE (And the friend I did it with) Today started off as most days do- By the sound off an alarm and the thoughts of having to get ready for my day. Today’s preparation was simple considering it was another day off. Still, my friend was coming down for the weekend so I had stuff to get ready. I set my alarm for 12pm but I had another premature wake up. I woke up at 11:30am and was quick to text my friend to ask when he would be arriving. He texted back and said 1ish. This meant I had roughly an hour and a half before he would arrive. Knowing this, I jumped out of my bed, grabbed my clothes and started to fill up the bath tub. Waiting for the bath tub to fill up, I decided to empty my bladder and after that I jumped in even though it wasn’t completely full. It’s okay because it was full enough to give me that great feeling of jumping into a bath tub first thing in the morning (Yes, I know it was the afternoon. Shut up!). I laid there for approximately ten minutes before I started to do anything. Then I used a face cloth to wipe down my greasy face which was super greasy due to me skipping the previous day’s daily bath/shower. Then I shaved what need to be which wasn’t much because I don’t grow facial hair too fast. I still like to shave to maintain a smooth feeling because if you can’t grow a beard, don’t try. It would look like a puberty stache if I ever let it grow without shaving it. I washed my hair with my 2-in-1 Shampoo/Conditioner and drained the tub. Refreshed, I walked down to my room and started up my computer to try to get my Wi-Fi working. No luck, so sadly I have to cancel my Brawl Challenge contest which really, really sucks. It sucks so much that I am almost depressed by the fact. I was so excited to watch other people’s strategies and work on perfecting my own. 1pm rolls around and I now pack up my Wii and Brawl to go over to my friend’s house. Ten minutes after there was still no sign of him so I texted him once again. He said he would be here at two because someone took the vehicle he was gonna use. That was an hour less of Brawl time, but whatever. So it comes 2pm and he finally shows almost on the dot. That’s awesome, I actually haven’t seen him for 2 weeks, but it seems like much longer!! I noticed that his hair has grown a lot in the couple of weeks, I never even knew that much hair was possible in such a time! So we drive off to his house which is located 10 minutes away by drive. So we start up Brawl and he notices that his brother had bought a copy and he hadn’t even noticed. I almost bought him one for his birthday, but good thing they weren’t there or he would have two! Anyways, we played around in random matches for a while to let him get used to some select characters. He was surprise how little most of the old characters had changed. Smash balls amazed him like they did me the first time I saw them in action. Then after fooling around we started Subspace Emissary, which was a new experience for the both of us. We took a lot of pictures and had lots of fun with Zero Suit Samus and Pikachu. Man, do those two yield some funny photos ! It was pretty much a fun time and we got to the third boss before I had to leave for home. Before I did, I had a pretty late supper with him and his family. They talked to me about moving in with them next semester. It was a pretty scary situation because they were pretty up front with stuff and made me realise I had to up my game in this world. I never let them know they were impacting me, I pretty much just nodded and grunted. They pretty much told me that they wanted to see really good marks and I wouldn’t have to pay rent, just utilities and food. It was a pretty good deal. They are good parents to their own children and even to me. My parents are loving and caring but could never lend such a support. It’s not really their fault and I love them regardless (Yes, I am writing down my mental argument, heh). Anyways, he took me home after the supper. You know, this writing thing is getting pretty addicting, though it takes me about half an hour for each entry. I count wait to reminisce tomorrows events after they happen. Look out for my next entry, I’ look out for you! (Lame closings ftw). March 17, 2008 Honey Mustard, Lettuce, Turkey, Bacon, Tomato...TURKEY CLUB! Another day of life, another day on the job. I woke up happy because today I had a 5am to 1pm shift. This shift is the best because my breaks are before everyone else and I am off really early which leaves me the rest of the day to come home, sit on my ass and do nothing but play games! Yeah...Anyways, for what it’s worth, I was happy from the moment I woke up. I did the usual (Put on my uniform, phone the cab, brush my teeth, etc.)and took the usual five to seven minute ride in the taxi. The moment I got to work, I checked the board to see what my position was. Woooo, Soup and Sandwich bar! I love this spot because it makes me feel special. It consist of constantly preparing meals for orders from both in-store and drive-thru. It’s very dependable on speed or you will get back up from the in-store orders. I started off as not really making the orders, but retrieving stuff from the freezer and stocking up various parts of the area while the manager took care of the orders- which I hate doing. It sucks that they took the ‘fun’ from me and made me do the stuff they didn’t want to do and technically are supposed to do. Well, in all technicality the night shift crew should have that all done so when the people who need stuff ready come in, it’s ready. After all that was said and done, I actually went out on the floor and did everything by myself until 9pam. I was pretty awesome, to be honest. I never let anyone wait too long and the drive-thru stuff was ready before the people got to the window. After the manager gave me my well deserved props, my self-esteem was boosted and I KILLED. I have never love the position more to be honest. So Angie came in at 9am and it was good times. Angie is really nice and funny and a good person to talk to and she doesn’t get mad easily if at all. It was pretty great and we had some good moments and laughs, woo! I taught her how to make the new roast beef sandwich which is really good(All of my readers(WVI), you should try it). It was pretty dead after Angie got here, which was sucky but it gave us time to do any other stocking that we needed done. All was fun and games until the ever so hated LUNCH TIME rolled around. Everyone hates soup and sandwich around lunch because we just get slammed. Even I get frustrated and that’s rare. I don’t know why it’s so frustrating, but it is because Drive-Thru gets impatient and I know what it’s like and I just want them to be happy and have good service. It is especially bad when eight sandwiches pop up coming from both ends. That’s all good, but throw in some soups nd bagels and you have some serious craptastic moments. And to add to everything, we ran out of a bunch of stuff like everything bagels and chicken salad mix stuff. After lunch was over, it was pretty much my time to go home. I did the usual after-lunch stocking and by the time that was all done, it was a bit passed my time to leave so I said my goodbyes and went to the back to eat a couple cookies before my walk home. Lucky me, lucky me. The beautiful Salma was on her break so I sat there and chatted with her until she was done. She’s all things good but her teeth are bad, but I don’t care. She used to be pretty poor back in her home country. After she was done, I was done, so I walked home. Forty minutes of daily repetition really sucks, but I put up with it because it’s the only exercise I get when my friends aren’t around and it’s worth the $7 save that I am only willing to put up in one direction when I am really too tired to walk so much. I stopped at Wal*Mart along the way and picked up dog food and a couple packs of Pokemon Cards and went on my way. After arriving home, I had a bath which I fell asleep in. 30 minutes before I realise and the water was cold. I quickly washed my hair and came to the laptop to start typing this out. I was planning and doing yesterday and the day before, but I refused to put in 2+ hours just to simply do something for fun(I use the word ‘fun’ very lightly. Tomorrow should be slightly more interesting, but I can’t promise anything. Peace. March 18, 2008 Play Brawl? Check. Board 8? Check. Another Dull Day? Check! I woke up this morning and just cringed at the fact that I had to endure another two graveyard shifts at work. I was still feeling a bit uppity because it was a while away. First thing that I did after I woke up was let my little female dog out. Then, when she came in, I let out the other two male dogs who seem to sniff her butt while she is peeing which is why I let them out separately. After that, I ask for my high speed wireless modem from my dad so I could go online. He told me he had some emailing and stuff to finish up so I decided to have a bath. The reason I am bathing so much and not showering is because the shower head flew off last time and water got all over the bathroom and I don’t trust my dad’s “Just put it back on” method. This bath was just my usual hot bath without me falling asleep in it since I just woke up. It seemed that the water wasn’t warm enough from the get-go, so I had to add some hotness to it. It was a pretty good bath after that. After that was all done and over with, I brushed my teeth and stuff(Isn’t my life just so interesting?). My dad was still online and I insisted he would just get off already, but he demanded ten more minutes. I gave in to his one-end offer and decided to go to 7-11. I love 7-11. I was questioning taking one of the dogs, but I couldn’t because the other two wanted to come, but I only had one leash, so I decided to go alone. I stepped outside and it was quite nice (+12 Celsius), another warm day for Canada. What sucks is that it was busy as hell outside and I found it troublesome just crossing the highway which has NO CROSSWALKS. Yes, it was Frogger. I made it though, but some idiot didn’t have his lights on and I almost got hit. He should’ve been considerate for the fact that my glasses were broken. Well, he doesn’t know me, but still. I made it to the store in one piece and got a couple smokies, a couple Xenergy drinks and a couple chocolate bars. I neeeed energy drinks for the upcoming night. I honestly cringe every time I think about being bored out of my skull from 11pm to 7am. It’s a wonder I don’t fall asleep. Once I got home my dad was still not done with my modem! Grrrr, I just decided to screw the internet because I have Brawl. I went straight to my challenge page and cleared the ‘play as character’ and ‘play on stage’ a certain amount of times challenges. After that, I beat target test level 4 with all characters and then beat classic mode with twenty characters- which took up most of my time. With the little time I had left before I had to write this, I played coin matches until I had completed the three coin challenges. It was a pretty good day for me and my challenges and I only have 15-25 left. The y are all the collecting ones and the ones where you have to beat modes with every character and on every difficulty. In between all of my Brawl time, I did eat. I had my chocolate bars and smokies and some pizza. I eat pretty unhealthily when I am not at work because at work I have easy access to free vegetables and all that yummy sex. And besides what I wrote about, there was nothing else to my day. It sucks when I actually think about it, but it was so short that it’s almost unfair that I had to write so much about it. Since I have more words needing to be typed and I still have more day left, I will talk about what is about to happen. Biggest Loser, my favourite show, is on now. It’s picking up where the last episode episode left off at an elimination. The last episode was so incredible that they had to extend it beyond the 2 hours they have. And that was my day. I’m sorry, Bellis, that I had to extend it so cheaply, but have some sympathy for me :p Tomorrow will be even worse since I will be waking up at 3pm...I better do a lot to make my write up different from today’s -_-. March 19, 2008 Ryley, The Graveyard Keepa! 12am strikes. I had already been at work for an hour and it was a pretty fast hour. This is the first graveyard shift that I worked after closing down the front lobby which means only drive thru was open. This had me on cloud nine just thinking how easy the night was gonna be only having to worry about one side with two people rather than two people for two sides. I scraped the bottom of where all the donuts sit because stuff falls down there. Then I wiped it, wooo. It was a pretty slow night considering that nobody could come into the front. This allowed me to mop and sweep the front lobby without being disrupted by stupid customers. I swept the lobby and then the place where the employees are and then I mopped. Meanwhile, my female work mate took care of any people who came through drive thru. It was a boring night, really, but everything got done which is unusual on a graveyard shift because it’s hard to keep up having only to people. When 3am came I trayed up the breakfast stuff and baked it all off at 4am. I was anticipating 5am because when it hits that means all of the 5am-1pm people come in. They’re all pretty good people that I am always working with. After that, time flew by and then I was off work after covering a couple 5-1 breaks at 7am. I got home at about 7:40, but didn’t get to sleep until 9am. At 3pm I woke up. It sucks that I was only able to get six hours of sleep when I had the opportunity to get a lot more. I had the mentality of waking up and staying awake. I wish I had slept till about 5pm, but I wasn’t going to go back to sleep. Idk, it’s all pretty confusing. After the big wake up (>_>) I had the usual bath and did my usual afternoon thing. I made a few awesome stage builder creations to slowly work towards that build 15 stages one. Ugh, I love making stages and all, but it seems like it takes sooo much effort to make 15 that are worthy enough to be on my SD card. Anyways, that’s all I did in brawl today. It’s so hard to make these days into anything after I have already explained the same thing before. I do the same things day-by-day save a few interchangeable things within the things. I did a few things on board eight, thought up five ideas for future WWYD day and yeah. Pretty much cringing all day thinking about my night shift tonight (At least it’s followed by two nice days off). I ate pizza and muffins today. That’s right, two meals of pizza and muffins. Yum yum yum. I don’t feel good and that’s why I never played much brawl today... I spend my days waiting for the next day and the next. Hoping success will come soon enough and making little efforts to push it forward. I am going off to school in September so things should pick up. I truly truly wish I was going to school during the week of this challenge so I could have some rich content, but I end up with this crappy write up combined with my crappy writing ability and crap. Right now I find myself awaiting work with fear and trying to figure out my laptop’s integrated webcam and microphone. I keep getting this error ‘graph render failed’. I am pretty sure it’s a common problem that comes from combining vista and laptops, but I have yet to find an answer. I will keep trying to find an answer until I have to go to work. So that’s it for today. Tomorrow is the last day of the challenge and I am sooo relieved. I hope tomorrow will require me doing something rather than recollecting my moments of doing nothing. I am sure it will. Let’s see what the final chapter to this craptale has to offer... Hopefully I get a lot of Brawl time in tomorrow and maybe enough to finish classic mode with the final fifteen characters. Right now my tonsil hurts and has white lumps. Maybe I should see what that is a symptom if just to be safe, so until tomorrow, I bid you farewell and wish you a happy night. Well, not too happy. I don’t want you having all the fun I should be having. March 20, 2008 One Last Night I am going to start at 12am again. It was my last night shift today for at least another two weeks so that’s all cool. I worked with the same person again today which is good because the other person that works night is old and annoying whereas this one is young, funny AND has a good taste in music. I started doing the scraping of all that crap while he swept to prepare for me to mop. It was another pretty slow night with a few streaks of customers in between the long, drab pauses. The shift before us must’ve been busy because we were left with nothing done. That’s okay because as I said, slow night. I was especially tired today and it really, really sucked. Not only did I come in an hour early by accident, but they needed me to stay an extra hour in the morning so I did. So altogether, my shift was; 1 hour of annoying evening shift people, 6 hours of boring boringness and 3 hours of business which would be fun and okay if I hadn’t just done nothing for 6 hours that late at night! While I was at work my dad’s friend came in and told me not to worry about bringing him coffee. He gave me money for the cab both ways and extra for his coffee. He is staying at our house because his girlfriend just left him and broke his brand new TV. On top of that, he was depressed. He was taking pills and stuff to help with depression but being the person that my dad is he told him “You don’t need that crap, just drink beer and be happy”. Funny how my dad acts like such a purist, but is a raging alcoholic smoker who refuses to believe they aren’t good for him. Long story short, it was nice of him to let me pocket all of the extra change. This guy even lost his job, but my dad took care of that. He phoned the guy’s boss and told him to give him an extra chance at. In specific he said “If he screws up again, he loses his job and my help. Deal?”. My dad is a consultant in the oilfield which is a really big business in Alberta. With 25 years of experience, he knows everyone in this small city. I was really impressed with my dad today. He showed such care and companionship to his friend. It’s something my dad has always possessed, but going through rough times (losing his license and job until he gets his license back) has allowed him to become quite self-centered. I think he is truly starting to feel what it’s like not having a woman around ^_^. Anyways, it’s nice to see other things blooming besides the new-born flowers of spring! Back to my day...It was another muffin-eating day. I woke up, bathed etc etc etc. All I can do now is describe my Brawl playtime. I finally made 15 stages which did not get me my challenge. I was quite offended and was almost ready to use my hammer, but I was thinking maybe one of the stages never registered with the challenge even though it was made, so I made another stage-no luck. One more time I made a stage and VOILA! At 17 stages I finished the challenge “Create 15 Stages”. After that I tested some of my stages and boy, were they fun! Stage builder is so limited but provides a lot of chances for unique experiences. Along with the stages I finished a few more classic mode runs and beat All Star mode in every difficulty (Damn, do I ever love the Final Smash trophies!). I now only have about 10 lame characters left until I am done with classic mode. I only beat hard with everyone (Save two characters which I did on Intense and Very Hard for challenges). I think in the future I will come back and intense-clear everything in the game and refine every total high score I have. So it was another cliché day, but the last day I am forced to write about. Though this diary was hard, it inspires me to write about my off-the-ordinary days which would actually be fun to write about. I know nobody actually read the whole thing which is good because it would be better to read something...better! My throat hurts. Category:WWYD